New Reality Seeds

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

What does the group on this board think would have been the outcome of an early Suez canal?

I'm not sure the canal is really a big deal, it's not like stuff wasn't shipeed overland through Ottoman territory. The big change point here may be that the Ottoman Empire has started to *care* what's happening in the Indian Ocean and the ports of India. None of the great powers of Asia were naval powers much, anything that starts the change that is important, and I can't imagine the Persians or north Indians wouldn't react. Though this is a particuarly low point for both regions. The Timurid empire is in the process of collapsing, with a final fall in 1506, and Dehli Sultanate has been shrinking for a century, and no longer controls any of the coast, white the Mughals won't arrive for another 25 years. There's a reason the Portuguese were so amazingly successful, they arrived at a real weak point for the local Imperial competition, and faced off mostly against smallish successor statelets. The fact that it is such an unstable period means there's a [lot] of room to butterfly the situation in any direction you'd like really.

I also wonder who in the struggle between Homeline, Centrum, and the Cabal would have a motive to push against the Religious Scholars (the main opposition to the plan of reopening the canal) to get the Sultan to build the Canal?

Does it need to be any of those? How about a secularist government in Homeline Turkey or Egypt? Or a religious one trying to convince said scholars they are wrong.